Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

There’s a very interesting article about Apple’s impact on mainstream electronic culture in today’s (Sunday) Washington Post. One nit I have to pick though is the credit they give Steve Jobs for making the personal computer revolution possible through his early understanding of the importance of an easy-to-use graphic interface for computer users. That’s true, but the real credit has to go to Xerox who at their Palo Alto Research Corporation (PARC) invented the Graphical User Interface through the use of icons, bit-mapping and windows. They also invented Ethernet, the foundation of networking, the laser printer, scaleable type and just about everything else we take for granted in computing these days. It’s just that the management of Xerox was only interested in the copier market and didn’t have the brains to recognize what they were sitting on. Strangely enough, PARC still exists and is still doing amazing things. Not so strangely, Xerox continues to ignore them!

The gate Steve Jobs walked out of carrying the crown jewels!